It’s Microsoft vs. Google in a Web-Tracking Battle

After a Wall Street Journal story last week about Google bypassing the privacy settings on Apple’s Safari Web browser, Microsoft has written a blog post accusing Google of doing similar things on Internet Explorer.

But what is happening on IE is a bit different, and it involves a problem that has been known about for some time by Microsoft and privacy researchers.

Here’s what’s going on: By default, IE is designed to block little files called “cookies” if they come from tracking companies. But the way it does this is fairly complicated.